Digital printing and printed electronics at DRUPA

When visiting DRUPA I was struck by the importance of digital printing. Huge booths from HP, Canon, Xerox, Agfa and Kodak underlined the growing potential of digital printing. I recently read a report about printing documents. In four years time 81% of all documents will still be printed, of which 15% in colour. Nineteen percent of all printed documents will be replaced by electronic versions in 2012. And consumers will have an additional 31% of electronic documents.

Sappi showed an interesting new application of paper: via the use of a printed code visitors could download on their mobile phone a song from the Belgian singer Natalia. This UpCode has to be captured with the camera of a mobile phone to allow the download. My agency Frysk created this application that can help advertisers to increase their print medium return on investment. The London Guide, Yellow Pages, Visa and real estate companies are current users of this system. Print City showed many other applications of enriched paper that might grow the potential use of paper as a medium.